Sleep Chart by Age: How Much Sleep Do Babies Need

Sleep Chart by Age: How Much Sleep Do Babies Need

Summary: Sleep time requirement differs by age. Newborns need more sleep hours than infants, toddlers, preschoolers and teenagers. Too much sleep or lack of sleep does no good to kids’ health. Moreover, oversleep or sleep deprivation for long can cause sleep disorder. In this post, we share with you the baby bedtime routine to get baby to sleep through the night.

It is common sense that infants need more sleep than adults, teenagers and even toddlers. However, not all of us know exactly how many hours of sleep do kids need. This age sleeping chart will tell you sleep requirements by age.

Part 1. Sleep Chart by Age: How Much Sleep Do Babies Need

By checking the kids sleeping chart below, you will see how much sleep does a 4-year-old need, or kids of any age needs: Infants need about 12 to 16 hours of sleep each day including naps and toddlers and preschoolers need less, which is from about 9 to 14 hours. As kids grow, they need less sleep and don’t necessarily needs too many naps. If your kids are in their 10s, they need only 8-10, which is approaching adults sleep time.

Oversleeping and sleep deprivation are both not good for kids growth. In the next following parts, let’s see why:

Part 2. Causes & Effects of Kids’ Oversleeping

If your 4-year-old kid has sleeping 14 hours a day and still tired, then he/she has a oversleep. If this happens frequently, it is not a good thing because there are some side effects of excessive sleeping which will do harm to your kids’ health if you don’t stick to the sleep charts for kids. Let’s check the causes and effects oversleeping causes:

1. Top 3 Oversleeping Causes: Reasons for Oversleeping

a). Not Getting Enough Sleep
If you don’t have enough sleep the other night, such as attending a slumber party and stay up late the other night, it is not that easy to pay off the sleep debt. You need more hours to supplement the lack of sleep. And you will find it difficult to wake yourself up the next morning. It’s not really oversleeping if sleeping in is because of lack of sleep. But if this happens regularly, that is real oversleeping.

b). Having a Poor Schedule
If you don’t follow a strict sleep time schedule and stay up late at night or sometimes go to bed earlier. If your kids are having these sort of delayed sleep phase syndrome, the so-called DSPS, their internal body clocks will be chaotic and you will find it absolutely hard to wake them up even with a few alarm clock being set.

c). A Poor Mindset
Anxiety, boredom, depression, fear, or lack of motivation will also leads to oversleeping. Think about it? Did you feels like no willing to get up especially in winter? Did you feel sleepy the morning you have to get up early for the coming exam? Did you wish to bury yourself in bed and don’t want to think about the presentation on weekend morning? If yes, then, that’s the same circumstance your kids is experiencing.

2. Mental & Physical Effects of Kids Oversleeping

2.1. Physical Effects

a). Getting Fat – While sleeping, we need less energy, so the energy that we supposed to gain from foods will be stored as fat for later use. If you have a late night snack, more fats will be absorbed. The longer time your kids sleep, the less time they can have their fats burned off, and the more weight they will put on.

b). Back Pain – That depends on the support of your mattress. Too soft will concentrate your body weight to lower back and cause pain no matter you sleep on your stomach, on your side or on your back, while too firm will provide uneven support and cause you toss and turn during the night.

2.2. Psychological Effects

When oversleeping happens a lot, it will do some effects on psychology as well. Being lecture not to be late to school next time, missing the beginning of the long-anticipating movie, getting fat day by day because of oversleeping will grow anxiety, depression and regret of a kids.

Part 3. Sleep Deprivation: Effects that Lack of Sleep in Children Cause

Getting too little sleep will result in behavioral and cognitive issues: Kids will have more difficulties with concentrations, emotional controls, problem-solving, reasoning and more. If you find that your kids have these symptoms, your kids are having a lack of sleep:

1. Mental Effects

– Yawning from time to time
– Fatigue
– Forgetfulness
– Lack of motivation
– Hard to concentrate
– Depressed, stressed, and bad-tempered

2. Physical Effects

Part 4. Symptoms of Sleep Disorders in Children

No matter your kids are having oversleeping or sleep deprivation, it is not ideal for kids’ growing up and will cause sleep disorders in toddlers if this always happens.

1. Trouble Sleeping: If toddler sleep issues happen on your kids, that he/she not willing to go to sleep is a sign of insomnia. Insomnia can be caused by stress from school work, social issues, family issues and more.

2. Excessive Daytime Sleep: If your kids sleeping too much, hard to wake up in the next morning, feeling sleepy all the time and having too much nap at daytime, he/she is suffering oversleeping.

3. Snoring: Snoring which is a vibration in the upper airway is not a big deal directly for kids health, however, it is a precursor to a sleep disorder in children.

4. Nightmares: Having a nightmare at night will wake a child up feeling terrified, afraid and threatened. Nightmares happen a lot when your kids are 3-10 years old and will get less as your kids grow. Frequently woke up at night can disturb children’s sleep and lead to behavioral issues.

5. Night Terrors: Night terrors are different from nightmares. There are terrifying scenes in kids’ dream but that won’t wake your kids up. Symptoms are sometimes the child sits up in bed, sweating, rapid breath and the eye wide open without waking up. The cause of night terrors is considered something to do with the immature central nervous system.

6. Sleep Walking: More than 30% of kids aged 3-7 are having sleepwalking issues while sleeping. Kids unintentionally leave their bed and walk around with their eyes open. Sleepwalking occurs for about 5 to 15 minutes and they have no memory of this when they wake up the next morning. Sleepwalking is dangerous when they are walking downstairs. Do not wake up a sleepwalker because it will cause fear and confusion.

7. Bedwetting: Bed wetting at night doesn’t raise concerns of parents because bedwetting is common among kids. However, if your over 5-year-old kids wet their beds at night for more than 2 times a week, then that’s a symptom of sleep disorder.

Part 5. How to Get Baby to Sleep Through The Night

Sleeping deprivation and oversleeping do so many harms to both our kids’ mental and physical health while sleeping well increase brainpower and your physical relax. Playing mobile phones and tablets late at night or toddler dry cough at night are both the causes of lack of sleep. To know how to get a toddler to sleep, you need to follow these dos and don’ts before your kids’ sleep time.

The reason why is sleep important for children is that it not only promotes growth, affects weight, beat germs, boost learning and increase kids’ attention span. So it is critical to establishing healthy baby bedtime routines for our kids:

#1. Play A Game or Let Her Dance

Play a simple game with your kid or ask her to dance what she learned from kindergarten can let off some energy so that your child can feel a little bit more exhausted and sleepy.

#2. Take A Bath and Put Pajama on

Taking a bath after playing game can clean and dry your baby. Moreover, in winter, a warm water bath can also soothing your kids and make them a better mood of going to bed.

#3. A Happy Tummy Ensures A Happy Sleep

Before getting your kids to bed, you can consider offering snacks that contains both protein and carbohydrates or a bottle of milk. Carbohydrates makes us sleepy and protein helps keep blood sugar level even until breakfast while milk contains melatonin that regulates sleep-wake cycle.

#4. Brush Teeth Before Sleeping

Brushing teeth of your kids before bedtime is critical because food debris will remain in oral cavity which will breed germs and bacteria. Having kids’ teeth brushed can not only get rid of food debris, but also build up barrier to acid with the help of Fluoride in toothpaste.

#5. Firm or Soft Mattress for Toddler

If your baby constantly moving while sleeping, you should check his/her mattress too see whether their mattress is too firm. As we’ve mentioned above, too firm will lead to back pain after the long night and too firm will lead to constantly toss and turn during the night. So a child mattress buying guide to teach you the perfect mattress firmness for child and the best support type will be highly demanded.

#6. Have a Chat or Read a Bedtime Story

After having a comfortable bath, you can put your baby into bed and sharing your kids’ day in school with a chat or you can prepare the favorite bedtime story your kids love. Reading bedtime story can not only calm your kids down but also exposure more vocabulary to your kids, which they might recognize these new words little by little, maybe.

#7. Baby Lullaby: Songs to Put Baby to Sleep

There are many baby sleeping songs available on the Internet providing relaxing music for kids to sleep such as YouTube, Spotify, LastFM, etc. This suitable music or audios that suitable for kids bedtime includes white noise sounds, classical music, and other soft music. My favorite songs to sing my child during bedtime are Que Sera Sera, Soft Kitty, Vincent, Three Little Bird, You Are My Sunshine and more.

However, even though we put our kid to bed early at night, it doesn’t mean that your child sleep well through the night. They might have nightmares, night terror, go to the bathroom after you put them into bed. To have an approximate understanding of how’s the sleep quality of your kid, you can adopt some sort of sleep tracker, there are apps and wristband sleep trackers for your options, I will recommend wristbands like Garmin Vivofit 2 because it can track the sleep activity more accurate than that on smartphones. You can check how to use Garmin Vivofit 2 to check daytime activities and nighttime sleep of your kids.

Stick to the kids sleep chart for no matter you infants, babies, toddlers or teenagers is quite important. If your child having sleep problems or if you have experience on solving these toddler sleep problems, please share your experience with other moms in the comment areas below.